Album reviews, Live reviews, Books and anything else I find interesting

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YES hits the road again with their Yestival tour kicking off in Greensboro NC this Friday. Also appearing on the bill (at most dates) are Todd Rundgren and Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy. The 31-date trek includes four Canadian dates, in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and London.

YES will play one track from each of their first ten albums in chronological order – from 1968’s ‘Yes’ through to 1980’s ‘Drama’, with ‘added surprises’. This sounds like a tour not to be missed, with YES continuing to perform deep cuts alongside fan favourites.

Alan White will be supported for this tour by additional drummer Dylan Howe, son of Steve. From the YES Official Facebook page:

2017 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductees YES and longtime drummer Alan White have today (7/26) announced that Dylan Howe, son of guitarist Steve Howe, will be joining the band’s rhythm section on this summer’s 31-date North American YESTIVAL Tour creating a twin drum powerhouse alongside White, in similar fashion that Bill Bruford and White brought on their Union Tour in the early 1990s with two drummers playing simultaneously.
“It’s a pleasure for me to welcome Dylan Howe to the YES stage,” shares White. “I’ve known Dylan for most of his life and I’m proud to think I’ve helped to be an inspiration in his musical journey. I’m very much looking forward to performing with him this summer for the upcoming YES tour.”
“I feel very honored and fortunate to have got the call to join YES this summer,” adds Dylan. “This to me is, quite possibly, the musical zenith of my career – my love for this music and the great musicianship that runs through it has always been a massive inspiration to me. Bill and Alan’s drumming is why I started playing the drums in the first place, and to have the opportunity to honor their great contribution to drumming whilst playing alongside Alan with my brilliant father and this outstanding lineup is a dream come true for me.”

2017 has been an ‘interesting’ year in Yesworld. April saw the 8-man ‘Union’ line up inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, which resulted in a patched up performance at the induction ceremony by members of both YES and ARW (now know as Yes Featuring Anderson, Rabin, Wakeman). Since then, both bands have reiterated their own plans to celebrate YES’s 50th Anniversary in 2018.

YES Official have announced the dates for their Yestival American tour which will feature Todd Rundgren and Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy as support acts. According to Yesworld.com “…. YES will play one track live, from each studio album from YES (1969) to DRAMA (1980), chronologically, with a few surprises thrown in.”

Presales begin 13th April, with there being a possibility of extra dates being added.

YES were recently inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame of course, but if anyone was hoping or expecting any kind of further union, the ongoing name-grabbing attempts by ARW – who appear to have a legal right to be known as ‘YES featuring Jon Anderson, Trevor Rabin, Rick Wakeman’ – and the frosty nature of relations during the induction ceremony have put an end to that. Both camps have separately announced there will be no further unions, despite next year being the band’s 50th Anniversary.

YES already have plans to tour Europe in early 2018 when they are expected to be performing Relayer in full.

ARW themselves return to North America in August/September, including 3 concerts in Canada:

Forty three years after its original release, the controversially divisive ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ has just been released by Panegyric in two different deluxe formats. A 3 x cd/ 1 x blu-ray disc version – reviewed here, and a 2 x cd/2 x DVD-A version. Review and pictures by Tim Darbyshire…….

‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ is the fifth Panegyric release in the series of expanded YES editions including Steven Wilson 5.1 Surround mixes, new stereo mixes and high-resolution stereo mixes of the original music. There’s a wealth of extra material on blu-ray edition (see full track listing below). Steven Wilson has produced the new mixes with the approval of the band and previously unseen restored artwork (overseen and approved by Roger Dean ) adorn an expanded booklet which contains new sleeve-notes (including a new essay from Sid Smith), and archive material.

The package is superb, and of course the sleeve must be one of the best album covers created by YES’ unofficial sixth member Roger Dean. But what about the music?

After the high of 1972’s near perfect ‘Close To The Edge’, ‘Tales from Topographic Oceans’ is the sixth studio album by YES, released in 1973 on Atlantic Records. Presented as an 80 minute double vinyl album with one track on each side, its concept is based on singer Jon Anderson’s interpretation of four Shastric scriptures from a footnote in ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahansa Yogananda – a book he was introduced to by ex-King Crimson percussionist Jamie Muir at Bill Bruford’s wedding. This footnote described four bodies of Hindu text, collectively named the shastras, that Yogananda described as “comprehensive treatises” that cover “every aspect of religious and social life, and the fields of law, medicine, architecture, art, etc” that “convey profound truths under a veil of detailed symbolism” This fitted Jon Anderson’s quest for a big theme for the next Yes album. He wanted a limitless large-scale composition.

Ambitious, stellar and triumphant? Or overblown, pretentious nonsense? ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ is loved (mostly by fans) and loathed (by music critics) and has sometimes polarized the YES fan base, as well as the band itself.

Jon Anderson and Steve Howe thrashed out the structure and themes of the double album while on tour in early 1973, and understandably remain supportive of the music. They had the task of ‘selling the concept’ to the rest of the band. Chris Squire and debutant drummer Alan White knuckled down, but Rick Wakeman left the band after never really embracing the wide-ranging themes of the album and the direction the music was taking the band. Despite this, Wakeman’s contribution to the album are stellar, providing colour and atmosphere throughout and of course the minimoog solo towards the end of ‘The Revealing Science Of God’ remains one of the highlights of his contributions to any YES music. Squire in particular comes to the fore during ‘Ritual’, which rounds off the album and includes some of the most beautiful parts of any YES song in the ‘Nous Sommes Du Soleil’ sections.

Steven Wilson remains a strong advocate: “I worked on and off for about 3 years on this new mix in my quest to do it justice. I hope it will satisfy the people who agree with me that it may just be Yes’ pre-eminent masterpiece.”

Sonically I’d say it’s one of the best new mixes Steven Wilson has done for YES. There’s a new clarity and increased depth to all the instruments making this definitive edition a joy to revisit. As with all the Wilson 5.1 surround mixes, additional instrumentation can be heard, sounds that used to be lost in the muddy original mix. For those who continue to be put off by four twenty minute pieces of music, there are five ‘single edits’ – sections chosen by Steven Wilson to highlight the strength of the song writing on the album.

To my mind, time has been kind to ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’. Although controversial in 1973, YES was always pushing boundaries and refusing to bow to corporate record company pressure to repeat the formula of past successes. Today it seems like no big deal for a band to produce long form pieces.

The point of this reissue probably isn’t to win new fans, but rather to reward existing fans. The blu-ray disc is stuffed full with different versions of the album and interesting extras (see below). I’ve always ranked this album just outside the Top 5 best YES albums – after ‘Close To The Edge’, ‘Relayer’, ‘Going For The One’, ‘Fragile’, and ‘The Yes Album’. My mind still tends to drift a bit in the first half of ‘The Ancient’, but ‘Tales’ is clearly part of the hot streak YES was on between 1970 and 1977.

YES played Side 1 (The Revealing Science Of God) and Side 4 (Ritual) live to enthusiastic US audiences in 2016 – see my reviews here and here.

TRACK LISTING:
New Steven Wilson Stereo Mixes:
CD 1:
1. The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn) 20:18
2. The Remembering (High In The Memory) 20:32
3. The Ancient (Giants Under The Sun) 18:41

2016 full album mix, plus an extended Dance of the Dawn and 5 single edits, all mixed by Steven Wilson.

Blu-Ray and DVD-A #1 (Region 0, NTSC):

New Stereo Mix (24/96 LPCM):
1. The Revealing Science Of God (Dance Of The Dawn) 20:18
2. The Remembering (High In The Memory) 20:32
3. The Ancient (Giants Under The Sun) 18:41
4. Ritual (Nous Sommes Du Soleil) 21:44
5. Dance Of The Dawn (extended version of The Revealing Science of God) 22:36

Pleasing many YES fans, North American ARW dates were announced yesterday – actually just US dates – with the show being described as ‘An Evening of YES Music and More’. An album of new music is expected to coincide with the October/November tour.

The official press release takes a barely disguised swipe at present day YES stating: ‘the aim of the band will be to restore the standard of excellence in performance that they established with their 1990 shows‘ (By 1990 shows, they mean the 8 member UNION tour of 1991/1992)

Despite this eternal YES political bickering – and the inevitable fansite rantings ‘who is the real YES?’, the signs are maybe pointing to an uneasy (but commercially profitable) UNION 2 in 2018 for the band’s 50th Anniversary…….

Confirmed by Steve Howe at the recent YES concert in Newcastle, and now on the official YES facebook page, 1973’s epic ‘Tales From Topographic Oceans’ is the next YES album to receive the Steven Wilson 5.1 surround deluxe treatment.

From Steven Wilson’s Remixes Facebook page: Started in 2013 and finally completed in April this year (so that’s 3 years in the making folks), my remix of the double album “Tales from Topographic Oceans” by Yes will be released later this year. More information soon.

‘Tales’ will be the fifth YES release by Panegyric, following ‘The Yes Album’, ‘Close To The Edge’, ‘Fragile’, and ‘Relayer’. Sid Smith has also confirmed he has written the new sleeve liner notes.

No release date has been announced yet, but I’m expecting two versions, a CD/blu-ray and a CD/dvd-a following the previous releases . Hopefully it will be released to coincide with the Summer YES tour, where the band is playing ‘The Revealing Science Of God’ and ‘Ritual’ from the album.